Deuss: The Manhattan projects

IT'S been a while since I've had a conversation with
Bermuda-based oil maverick John Deuss. But what comes to
mind after reading about the fatal helicopter crash of
Group Menatep's managing director (turned intelligence
agency informant), Stephen Curtis, is the response to a
question I once put to Deuss as to whether government or
organised crime really runs things. At the time of Curtis'
death, he was also a director of Bermuda Commercial Bank,
the bank chaired by Deuss.

"It's close," Deuss said,
sometime towards the end of the Reagan
Administration.

I've been wondering how he might answer
that question now . . .

An Internet NameBase search puts John Deuss
squarely in the know. Run his name through that database and
you end up with Deuss at the centre of a corporate and
espionage spiderweb that links him directly to Research
Associates International, run by the late Vietnam spymaster
Ted Shackley (the infamous "Blonde Ghost" who co-ordinated
anti-Castro attacks on Cuba prior to the Bay of Pigs and
ran the undeclared wars in Laos and Cambodia that became
bloody sideshows to the US military involvement in South
Vietnam). Deuss hired Shackley after he left the Central
Intelligence Agency in 1979 to organise shipments of oil to
South Africa, then under a global oil embargo that Deuss
cheerfully flouted.

And through Shackley, Deuss is linked
with some of the most controversial names in recent history:
Rogue CIA agent Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, John Singlaub,
Philip Agee, Manucher Hashemi, Rafael (Chi Chi) Quintero and
even Australia's CIA-linked/arms-dealing/narco-trafficking
Nugan Hand Bank.

Names that summon the words of dying spy
chief James Angleton, as told to Joe Trento:
"Fundamentally, the founding fathers of US intelligence were
liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the
more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted
and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity the only
thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power . .
. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank
Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with
them you were in a room full of people that you had to
believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see
them there soon."

However, such a "six degrees of
separation" name game can prove seriously misleading.

"Shackley worked for John, not the other way around," one
of Deuss' long-time business associates reminded me as he
sat reading to me from Carl Bernstein's article The CIA and
the Media in the amber lights of the Harvard Club.

So to
better understand the significance of the Deuss/Curtis
connection, I decided to revisit my own archives . .
.

IN 1974, when Rudi
Gernreich was dressing his models in bicycle parts, a Dutch
oil trader named John Deuss quietly opened an expensive
evening dress collection on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue in
the same building with Geoffrey Beene and Bill Blass. He
called the company "Alexandra Christie".

It was a
subsidiary of his fledgling JOC Oil company, which he'd
started the previous year, fuelled by the OPEC oil embargo.
He gave up his position as a used car salesman in Amsterdam
to do so. A year on, Deuss was being touted as the "world's
most important independent oil trader".

I was the model
for Alexandra Christie, on hiatus from starvation as a
writer/editor at Hearst magazines, where my environment
column had been killed by the gun lobby. I was hired by the
assistant designer, who I'd met at another fashion house.
He largely designed the collection since the star designer
was having emotional problems.

Alexandra Christie
featured gossamer dresses in "delicate water colours" with
layered skirts, ruffles and ribbons, and an array of slinky
silk jerseys. The signature piece for spring was a black
cocktail length dress with see-through lace back.

But
with all the social upheavals taking place in America at the
time, these "society" numbers were not selling wildly. The
company quickly became a curiosity to fashion insiders who
were more interested in finding out who the "backer" was
than writing orders.

Few ever found out. Deuss never made
an appearance at Alexandra Christie. Even at the Plaza Hotel
"high tea" presentation, Deuss was missing. The story was
that he was in Qatar, en route to the Soviet Union. And that
JOC Oil was already worth $2 billion.

In fact, it was only
after I helped Deuss close the fashion company in 1975 that
we actually met. The decision to terminate was precipitated
by the designer's emotional collapse.

To show his
appreciation, Deuss invited me to dinner at Lutece, the
finest restaurant in New York. He also threw in the dresses.
I was then modelling for Giorgio Sant Angelo, the designer
who dressed Verushka for the cover of Vogue. I invited an
Italian model to join us.

Deuss invited John Hoey, a
Riyadh-based investment banker who had just returned from
Vietnam where he'd been a foreign service officer at the US
Embassy in Saigon - a compound shared coincidentally by CIA
station chief Ted
Shackley.

**********

HOEY co-wrote the
assessment book on US pacification efforts while in
Vietnam. He later went into the oil business, serving as
President of Hondo Oil as well as Atlantic Refining, and is
now a Director of Tethys Oil in Stockholm.

Deuss and Hoey
were a highly entertaining and unique duo. Deuss seemed even
younger than 31 because he was so animated. His quick mind
was sublime - and upstaged the mastery of his tailor.

He
had the wiry physique of a tennis player, which he was. His
eyes changed too rapidly to get more than a hint of what he
might really be thinking, but they were open and generous.
There was a dramatic scar on the back of his head.

Though
just a few years older, Hoey appeared more contemplative,
having seen war up close. There was a resemblance to Sean
Connery as Bond somewhere under the beard he'd grown in
order to blend in with the Saudi culture. He told me that
he'd been a fullback at Notre Dame.

Deuss called him
"Froggy", a name I've never attempted to decode.

It was a
spirited encounter. Deuss was fond of Tattinger in those
days and Hoey, mad about Cuban cigars, which he passed
around the table.

I remember visiting Deuss subsequently
at JOC Oil headquarters in the Olympic Towers. His office
was a sparsely furnished room. He was seated at a desk
against the wall with a computer on top to his left. I
recall seeing a framed Mid-East artifact.

He had one eye
on the screen as I entered and continued to monitor the
computer even as we spoke. Not a lot of people had computers
on their desks in the mid-'70s, and since he was not open
about what he was viewing, I felt a bit uneasy. I'd learn
many years later that he was simply running programs.

He
had a lovely, raven-haired secretary named Camille, who I
remember dressed in cashmere with silk scarf, probably
Hermes. She was married, completely professional and was
never rattled.

A few months later, Deuss invited me to a
party at his Hamilton, Bermuda residence. I flew from New
Jersey's Butler Airfield in his Lear jet. Some guests were
already at the house - which was modestly furnished - when I
arrived. Most were company employees. Also in the mix were
two Liberians attached to the Tolbert regime who later fled
the 1980 coup in which Tolbert and his ministers were
stripped, tied to trees and shot.

I was beginning to get a
sense of how Deuss put together his deals -
Liberian-registered tankers would clearly be
useful.

However, contrary to what Dutch journalist Friso
Endt has written about Deuss' Bermuda headquarters, I don't
recall seeing girls lounging in bikinis. Deuss' first wife,
a writer, was present during one of my two trips to
Hamilton. His tennis pro, Rafael, always smiling, was there
for anyone interested in a match or instruction. The
atmosphere was relaxed, unpretentious, though everyone
dressed for dinner at the Southampton Princess.

There is
no question that Deuss has the classic male E-brain for
business, but with friends he was disarmed. I can still see
him, Bogart-like, at the wheel of his cruise boat
attempting to sing the popular Lebanese song Susannah!

We
might never have met again, except that I booked out for the
New York spring fashion shows in 1976 and joined a
"Bicentennial Collection Tour of the Middle East", going to
Kuwait and Iran. It was partly sponsored by the Al-Sabahs
and Pahlavis and had the blessing of the US State
Department.

Many of the designs were American "couture"
selling for $2,000-$6,000 a dress - from Scaasi, Sant
Angelo, Trigere, etc. The jewels from David Webb were real.
We were accompanied by executives from Estee
Lauder.

FORMER
CIA Director Richard Helms was then Ambassador to Iran
(George H.W. Bush was then CIA director). Helms attended our
fashion gala at the Royal Tehran Hilton, which later served
as headquarters for the Iranian revolution. The show was a
benefit for the Empress' mother's favourite charity - the
Children's Convalescence Home.

In Kuwait, we were honored
with a state dinner following shows at the Equestrian Club
(later temporary JIB headquarters during the Gulf War) and
at the American Embassy. Possibilities were being explored
for a show in Saudi Arabia as well. I received a telex at
the Kuwait Sheraton from John Hoey, who had returned to
Riyadh. It said:

"Regret unable to come to Kuwait, but
hope your presentation is a success. Timing is too short to
arrange anything in Saudi Arabia, but notified colleagues
in Saudi Arabia who expect to attend the Kuwait
presentation. Regards."

As a result of what turned out to
be a "quasi-official" tour, I met the important merchant
families, an array of international diplomats and everyone
else.

My photograph appeared on the front page of the
Kuwait Times, which I sent to Deuss, which kept me in his
"rolodex" and on his Christmas card list.

About six months
later I wanted to fly to Paris because I had interviews at
Givenchy and Ungaro. I asked Deuss if I could catch a ride
if he was heading in that direction.

He told me he had to
fly to Iraq first, and that if I could arrange a visa to
Iraq, I could join him. He'd then fly me back to
Europe.

Iraqi visas were being handled at the time by the
"Iraqi Interests Section" of the Indian Embassy in
Washington. But a friend from Kuwait pulled some strings and
I secured a one-week visa, indicating reason for travel:
"Giorgio di Santa Angelo" (sic) fashions.

I got a call
from Deuss' secretary, Camille, asking me what kind of food
I'd like for the trip. But an hour or so before departure,
Deuss' itinerary changed. He called to apologise, and
instead facilitated my commercial flight.

It was during my
second visit to Bermuda that Deuss told me about the rooftop
explosives accident he had as a teenager, which resulted in
a serious head injury. It had to be one of the defining
episodes of his life. At age 14 he looked into the face of
death and won.

Deuss told me his grandfather was a
physicist, and I got the impression that he may have been
trying to emulate him when disaster struck. He also said his
father had been a manager at General Motors in Amsterdam
(Friso Endt claims it was general motors - a garage in
Nijmegen, Holland, and The Wall Street Journal reports it
was Ford Motor Co.) and that he sometimes accompanied his
father to the office.

Two former Vietnam military pilots
flew me back from Bermuda. I was the only passenger because
I had a fashion booking on Monday morning and other guests
were taking a long weekend. I was going to be nearly an hour
late, so I called in to the Manhattan showroom from the jet
as we approached Butler airfield. In the late 1970s people
did not call in to work from jets. I confounded the showroom
manager, and subsequent bookings were cancelled.

Some
months later, I was surprised when Deuss and his date sat
down at a table next to me at Regine's, the Park Avenue
nightclub. I was having dinner at the time with Mahmoud
Alghanim, a man of substance and style from Kuwait's most
prominent merchant family. He was also a shareholder in
Kuwait's only independent oil company.

I was delighted at
the coincidental meeting. But Alghanim seemed less than
enthused when Deuss offered his business card. Deuss was
already recognised as "one of the sharks" by the Gulf
Arabs.

AROUND this time,
Deuss began pumping money into a magazine he called Chief
Executive, which shared offices with his oil company, now
renamed Transworld Oil. Deuss held the positions of
editor/publisher, CEO and chairman of the board; John Hoey
was vice-president. The Deuss/Hoey business relationship and
friendship continued to blossom.

The magazine resembled
Aramco World in layout and quality of paper stock. It
reached "a limited list of 25,000 distinguished world
leaders" and some of the same people were profiled. Lavish
full-page ads were dropped in from Gulf Oil, McDermott, Bell
Telephone, Canadair, Medafrica Cargo, the Arab African
International Bank and Paris' Hotel George V.

Under Deuss'
ownership Chief Executive was published four times a year.
(It was sold over a decade ago.) Each issue began with a
Deuss editorial, e.g., "Age Is No Barrier; Youth Is No
Bargain" about then Governor Reagan's age of 69 possibly
handicapping his presidency, if elected. Deuss didn't think
Reagan's age was of consequence.

His spring 1978
editorial, "The Quest For Harmony", discussed the agreement
signed in Rhodesia paving the way for majority rule.
Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was on the cover. Deuss
wrote:

"As chief executive of his country, Prime Minister
Smith made the decision to settle for what was practical
and most expedient. Ian Smith does not believe in majority
rule. But he accepts the fact that universal adult suffrage
in Rhodesia can no longer be postponed." (The next year
Deuss and Shackley would team up on oil shipments to South
Africa.)

Chief Executive features included one titled
"The Most Dangerous Corporate Game" about the perils of
businessmen paying bribes abroad; it was written by Ted
Sorensen, JFK's Special Counsel who was then a partner at
Paul, Weiss. Another presented a point by point "security
threat analysis" regarding the safety of CEOs.

Iain
Murray, Duke of Atholl, a CEO with his own private army, was
given six pages with a two-page photo of the Highlanders
marching in kilts with "goatskin sporran". There was an
interview with Lynn Salvage, President, The First Women's
Bank. And a visually stunning article on "Understanding
Islam" from Malcom Yapp of London's School of Oriental and
African Studies offering the following prescient wisdom:

"For the West, patience and an insurance policy in the
form of a diversification of energy supplies would probably
be better protection against Islamic revivalism than a big
stick. In the meantime, we should try to understand the
revivalists and sympathise with them. Infuriating as they
seem and as savagely as they behave, they have an ideal -
modernisation with morality: the creation of an urban
society without losing the values of an older and simpler
one. Many share this ideal."

************

I RECEIVED a note from
Deuss in 1981 after I'd resumed my career in journalism and
recently published a feature interview with Malcom Forbes in
Omni magazine - which Forbes insisted on reprinting as a
five-page centrefold in Forbes. Deuss had also just
profiled Forbes in Chief Executive and enclosed a
copy.

Then we lost touch for a few years. But, in 1987, I
proposed a profile of him for Lear's. It was a new magazine
for women. I think he may have thought it was a lifestyle
magazine involving CEOs and aviation.

Deuss had been
dubbed the "mystery man" in a New York Times article the
previous year. The article tracked his buying up of East
Coast oil refineries for Transworld Oil Ltd. But he had
still not come forward to sit for a portrait.

He finally
agreed to discuss the possibility of doing so with me over
lunch across the street from his office, at La Grenouille,
the most flattering restaurant in New York because of its
flowers and mirrors, and also the most delicious.

He
ordered a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse to toast old times, even
though he was no longer drinking. The lunch lasted exactly
45 minutes. And there was a car waiting outside to take him
to his next appointment. His decision regarding the story
was that Lear's was "not sexy enough" a format.

His big
profile would come in 1995 in a page one Wall Street Journal
article subtitled: "Is John Deuss a Visionary or a Slick
Operator? He Holds Key to the Project." It discussed his
brainchild Caspian Pipeline Consortium and attempts by
Chevron to push him out.

So what does this all say about
who Deuss is now in relation to Curtis? I conclude that
Deuss remains his own man - like the Duke of Atholl with the
motto: "Furth, forth and fill the fetters ("Go forth, be
lucky and take plenty of prisoners)." Yes, he should not be
underestimated.

*************

SUZAN MAZUR is a New York-based journalist.
Her reports have appeared in The Economist, The Financial
Times, Forbes, Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsday, among
other publications, as well on PBS, CBC and MBC. She has
been a guest on McLaughlin, Charlie Rose and various Fox
television news programmes. Ms Mazur worked for
Bermuda-based oil baron John Deuss in the 1970s and the
following profile is based on her first-hand impressions of
the controversial and elusive chairman of the Bermuda
Commercial Bank. She can be contacted at sznmzr@aol.com

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